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Sony: what you don’t know can’t hurt you

One of Sony's top executives doesn't see what all of the rootkit fuss is about …

Sony BMG's decision to employ rootkits to "lock down" CD-ROM drives on customer's machines has plenty of enthusiasts and consumer advocacy groups hopping angry. Sony, on the other hand, is being totally flippant, complaining about people calling their DRM tech "malware." "spyware," or "rootkit." Thomas Hesse, President of Sony BMG's global digital business division, showed up on NPR to try and sweep the entire thing under the rug.

"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it," he asked? "The software is designed to protect our CDs from unauthorized copying, ripping."

This shockingly bald and arrogant statement comes as other public faces of Sony and their partners are also trying to play down the fiasco. First 4 Internet Ltd, the British company that developed the DRM software, issued a so-called patch for the rootkit, but all it does is remove the cloaking technology that was used to hide the DRM tech from users. The rest of the system-unstabilizing, kernel-hooking garbage is left to sit there and fester.

Sony's justification for its moves are both saddening and hilarious at once. Pointing the big, hairy finger at pirates, the company has made it clear to the general media that such measures are there because of the big bad pirates, and that the software was designed to be so deeply entrenched and cloaked in a system precisely because today's pirates are ingenious, industrious sorts. They act as though they're sorry to have to hide their true intentions from the user via a licensing agreement (that should be torn to shreds in a court). But see, they just have to do it because otherwise, the pirates win (along with their friends, which presumably include communists, homebrew software makers, and people who share a single drink at restaurants where refills are free).

It plays well in Peoria, that is, until someone points out that all these elite pirate geniuses have to do is drop the CD into any Linux computer, and be bothered with none of it. That's right: the excuse for such insidious DRM, for DRM that potentially harms a system and behaves exactly like malware, turns out to be completely and utterly asinine on account of the fact that it only works on select platforms, anyway. Yarr, be there pirates smart enough to figure this out! Yarr, there be so!

And how well is that DRM working for ya Sony? It took me all of 45 seconds to find a pirated copy of Van Zant's latest album. Looks like it's working out perfectly!

Pathetic. And you know what? Pucker up and get ready to kiss the future, because if you think this is the end of this kind of behavior, just wait until you see how BD+ gets implemented on Blu-ray.

Ken Fisher
Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation. Emailken@arstechnica.com//Twitter@kenfisher